Alfred North Whitehead

There is no getting
out of it. Through
and through the
world is infected
with quantity. To
talk sense is to
talk in quantities.
. . . You cannot
evade quantity. You
may fly to poetry
and to music, and
quantity and number
will face you in
your rhythms and
your octaves.
Elegant intellects
which despise the
theory of quantity
are but half
developed. They are
more to be pitied
than blamed.

The Aims of
Education, 1917

Albert Einstein

It is mathematics
that offers the
exact mathematical
sciences a certain
measure of security
which, without
mathematics, they
could not obtain.

Albert Einstein

Andrew Wiles

Perhaps I could best
describe my
experience of doing
mathematics in terms
of entering a dark
mansion. You go
into the first room
and it's dark,
completely dark.
You stumble around,
bumping into
furniture.
Gradually, you learn
where each piece of
furniture is, and,
finally, after six
months or so, you
find the light
switch and turn it
on. Suddenly, it's
all illuminated and
you know exactly
where you were.
Then you enter the
next dark room....

PBS Nova program:
The Proof

Albert Einstein

Pure mathematics is
. . . the poetry of
logical ideas.

Albert Einstein
(1879-1955)

Alfred North Whitehead

Our minds are
finite, and yet even
in those
circumstances of
finitude, we are
surrounded by
possibilities that
are infinite, and
the purpose of human
life is to grasp as
much as we can out
of that infinitude.

Alfred North
Whitehead

Ada Lovelace (1843)

The more I study,
the more insatiable
do I feel my genius
for it to be.

The Difference
Engine, by Doron
Swade, Viking, 2000

Albert Einstein

I want to know how
God created this
world. I am not
interested in this
or that phenomenon,
in the spectrum of
this or that
element. I want to
know His thoughts;
the rest are
details.

Manfred Schroeder,
Fractals, Chaos,
Power Laws 1991

Albert Einstein

As far as the laws
of mathematics refer
to reality, they are
not certain; and as
far as they are
certain, they do not
refer to reality.